Pre-Break Bargaining

We met with the UO last Thursday to discuss our proposal on non-economic and economic articles. The session ended with some fireworks and I thought I'd fill you in.

One of the proposals we have been discussing with the university is our proposal that departments have a policy about the maximum number of students that can be assigned to a teaching GTF. We have made it clear that we are asking for this language because we think that some departments are giving GTFs more students than can reasonably be handled in the number of hours GTFs are assigned to work. We think that if departments have to set a policy on the number of students assigned to a GTF, then departments will be less likely to slowly raise the number of students or have one or two classes with super high enrollment.

Over the last four months, the UO has rejected our proposed language on the grounds that the maximum hours provisions of the Collective Bargaining Agreement provide protections against overwork. When we have suggested that departments and professors routinely expect GTFs to go over the hours limits or rely on them to violate the hours provisions in the interests of providing the undergraduates with a decent education, the UO's team expressed deep skepticism that such a thing ever happens. They suggested that if a GTF feels like he or she is going to go over their hours, they should talk with the supervisor about it. When we ask what GTFs should do if that doesn't work (because in our experience it doesn't), the UO said that GTFs should file grievances. We tried to explain why it was that GTFs feared filing grievances - retribution, the desire to avoid being labeled a troublemaker, desire to maintain harmonious relations with the professor who could be important later, the difficulty in proving overwork, etc. - but the UO's team seemingly dismissed these fears. They reiterated their deep skepticism that GTFs were ever asked to overwork - citing the UO's mission statement that asserts that undergraduate education is the UO's #1 priority, therefore making the possibility that a department would assign a GTF too many students an unlikelihood - and also reiterated that GTFs should file grievances if they have overwork complaints.

We found it shocking and surprising that the UO's bargaining team was unwilling to acknowledge that GTFs were often expected to overwork their hours. Two weeks ago, we asked your stewards to solicit anecdotes about overwork in your departments. We complied a 12 page document that detailed overwork situations at the UO. We gave this document to the UO at the table on Thursday as part of an effort to express to them that we believe that this is a serious issue and hopefully move them past their insistence that overwork by GTFs was a rare thing.

Unfortunately, their only response to the document was to ask us if we planned to give them the names of the GTFs who had overwork complaints or the names of the professors and/or classes. We said that we were not and reiterated our points about the fears GTFs feel around this issue.
The UO said that they wanted to be able to verify that these stories were true and that there were two sides to every story. The UO went into their caucus leaving it at that.

At the end of bargaining, as things were wrapping up, we tried again to get them to acknowledge that overwork by GTFs was a problem on campus, but they declined to do so. The best that they could do was to say that they would not want any GTF to overwork, but they also reasserted that we had not presented them with any evidence that any GTF has ever been asked to overwork, as they couldn't verify anything without specific names of GTFs.

We were very disappointed by the UO's response and asserted that pretty strongly. We cannot see how the UO will ever be willing to do anything about GTF overwork - and we are only asking for a very bare minimum, departments setting their own maximums - if they are unwilling to acknowledge that there is a problem and so far the UO has made it clear that they do not think overwork is an issue on this campus.

So far the UO is sticking by its assertion that the only solution to overwork on campus is to file grievances. With this in mind, we are asking all Spring term GTFs to keep careful track of their hours. If you feel that you are going over the hours total for the term,
(http://gtff.net/wiki/index.php/GTFF_CBA_2008-2010#ARTICLE_21_SALARY) let your supervisor know - you have every right to ask for a written response to your concerns - if your concerns are not meet, please contact me (dave@gtff.net) or Dan (andersen@gtff.net) to talk about solutions. The same is true if you are expected to work more than 15% of your FTE in any one week (like grading papers and a final in one week).

More bargaining information will be presented at the GMM on April 2nd and in future e-mails. You can read all proposals here: http://gtff.net/wiki/index.php/Resources#bargaining_articles